I completely agree that private citizens should be able to own rocket launchers, tanks, bombers, and so forth. Also in such a situation, the US military would be made obsolete due to private militias and corporate security forces. Which would save us a lot of taxes since our military-industrial complex is very inefficient. I don't know why there is all this flip-flopping around the obvious and logical solution. Saying that there are a lot of restrictions on what weapons private citizens can own, and massive subsidies for a bloated military-industrial complex, and therefore that guerilla warfare against a tyrannical central state would be hard because militaries are "magically" powerful, is nothing but an appeal to magic. Clearly the framers of the Constitution intended to not have a large standing army, distributed state military powers, to have militas, and for the average person to have the same firepower as the elites. The same philosophy applied logically to the modern world entails private ownership of all modern weapons and private militias. But even this argument notwithstanding, private gun ownership should still be maximized since guerilla warfare on home territory remains an effective strategy.

There are several problems with this line of thinking unfortunately.
1. This would not make the U.S. military forces obsolete because militias would not be able to secure U.S. assets abroad, resulting in a sharp decrease in diplomatic hard power.
2. As the author of the article stated, there are no reported instances of lighter gun laws directly increasing democratic governance. If anything it causes more violence against minority groups which destroys the democratic process.
3. Why should anyone care what the framers of the constitution intended? They are just human, their logic is not infalliable. Most of them completely disagreed with each other. If we premise constitutional debates on guessing what "the framers intended." We'd get a billion different views from guys who lived 200 years ago." What matters now is what is best for America.

At the time the constitution was written, there was a population of forty to fifty million Native Americans, exact number uncertain. That these people have been wiped out now does not mean they should be written out of history.

The settlers then would have considered arms at least as sacrosanct an Israeli settler/occupier would today. Threats from the government would have been secondary.

Guideline?? The only point of a constitution is that it is the SUPREME law. It is law in of itself, not a law textbook to be used as a reference. If it's only used as a guidebook then it becomes really meaningless whenever some fascist or communist or other authoritarian state decides to bend it to their taste.

As a Propagandist and regular commenter on the Economist, I would like to state that the Encyclopedia Dramatica Party applauds Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for his views. It helps further justify the righteousness of our ideas

The assumption that light arms that would be useful to an insurrection or insurgency would require that they be useful in successfully resisting or fighting off the heaviest-armed combat elements of the military ignores a key principle of guerilla and insurrectionary warfare. The point of such a war is NOT to successfully beat the regular military toe-to-toe, pound-for-pound, but to avoid decisive engagement with them and instead to attack and destroy or disable the much more vulnerable soft targets that the military requires to function. Those are things like the occupiers' command structure (assassinating the politicians and officers giving the orders, to be blunt), attacking their supply and logistics elements (blowing up or sabotaging stuff they need to function, like fuel supplies, food, civilian infrastructure, etc.), targeting civilian supporters of the regime (terrorism), and the like. That, and a lot of dirty fighting and doing things that the bigger side usually won't do or isn't equipped to deal with, like using civilian as human shields, booby traps, IEDs, etc. And the overall strategy ultimately isn't to beat the regime, but to succeed by holding out and preventing it from keeping control on the ground until its political will and ability to sustain the costs of the war run short. It's not a new strategy but it was familiar enough to the revolutionaries of the late 18th century, and it's been demonstrated to work time and again, for example, in Vietnam, in the Chinese Civil War, arguably in mandatory Palestine and in Iraq, in Afghanistan (against both the Soviet Union and against the US), etc.

This argument is beyond ridiculous. You on the one hand insist that a US government might become so tyrannical that the US people have to have a popular uprising against it, but then think that it will play nice, and not resort to mass punishments? Saddam had little problem with insurgents because he shelled villages loyal to dissidents with chemical weapons. If September the 11th shocked the nation into silence for a day, imagine what might happen if a mad tyrant uses chemical weapons on New York to set an example? Tens of thousands if not million dead, with the threat of your city being the next one? The American revolution worked because it had support from foreign nation states (lots of it), and the technological level of the rebels was on part with that of the imperial forces it fought. And the British empire didn't have anything comparable to secret police, and didn't use WMDs.

You can't have it both ways. If a person is mad and aggressive enough to force Americans to pick up arms, he'll be more devious and terrible than you can possibly imagine, and you'll be forced to stop when your families lives are at stake.

Your attempted rebuttal is based on an exaggerated estimate of the nations cowardice. Putting liberty before ones own and ones loved one's lives is precisely what is asked of free people.
The role of armned citizenry does not play the role of counterforce, it merely needs to raise the price of oppression. In recogniotion of your use of the 9/11 reaction, it must be agreed that the role of this part (armed citicenry) of the American system relies on more courage than is evidenced by the passage of the Patriot Act.

It's not based on exaggerations, few people are fanatic enough to get involved with insurgent forces if tyrants come to town. In the modern era, any tyrant good enough to take over America's freedom and gun obsessed populace is going to have to be incredibly brutal. They will torture you in front of your family, use mass punishment, listen in to communications, deploy a secret police, etc, etc, etc. Insurgent groups in modern dictatorships have often survived only because of outside help. Look at popular uprisings in the middle east. Without foreign help Libya's armed forces would have liquidated the opposition. And it seems that the Free Syria Army needs help from outsiders to keep up the fight. And even the French Resistance required allied help.

Then you have the problem that historically the groups that tend to become tyrants tend to be the ones who are pro-gun or heavily involved in the military establishment anyway. The Nazis had support from a lot of veteran soldiers, Pakistan's infamously powerful military, etc. If anyone would become a dictator in America, it would be the far-right, and they'd have all the bibles, flags, and guns to recruit enough support to usurp any central government.

And THEN the American revolutionary example needed many outside factors to help. The British empire was the gentlest of the Empires of the time compared to the likes of the Russians or Ottomans. And the rebels had support from the French navy, attacking British soldiers and cutting off supplies, as well as support from native American tribes, and other defectors from foreign nations (a Russian admiral commanding his own ship for one). The history has been glorified to a point wherein Americans have a laughably unrealistic view of what it would be to be living under a dictatorship, and how impossible it would be to deal with that without considerable help from other nations.

You just described the kind of asymmetrical warfare tactics that the US condemned as terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. What makes terrorism acceptable for the American people, and not for people of nations the US considers its enemies?

Your line of argument seems to follow the honourable Mr. Scalia, but to extend it into the absurd.

If I understand you correctly, you suggest a populace, armed with firearms, can defeat the mightiest military power the world has ever scene.

Sir, with all due respect, that military will lose only if they wish to lose.

Let us imagine that your force takes possession of Chicago. At great cost to the military, you have driven them out of the city, and they wander, disorganized in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

What is the appropriate military response?

Obviously, 20 to 30 25 kiloton nuclear weapons sprinkled over the greater Chicago area. Firing your AK-47 into the air would be scant defence against such an attack. You would be left holding a radioactive desert between Milwaukee, Peoria, and Ludington.

That seems something of an empty conquest to me. I can but assume you disagree.

A number of responses to address here, but they're all operating on a couple assumptions. A) That lines and division of forces in a future hypothetical guerilla or civil war will be clearly delineated rather than taking the form of a "borderless" or "three-block" war. That is, that they'll be clearly divided enough for Big Brother's big weapons (up to and including nuclear weapons!) to be used to effectively target an amorphous and mobile resistance that's able to strike and fade back into the civilian population. Given John Eh's example, why would a resistance movement even bother trying to "seize" a city, like Chicago? Given the risk you just described, and the overall strategy of guerilla warfare, to deny the hostile government control over the population rather than necessarily to assert it itself, it'd be safer to simply target enough specific things in the city discretely, say, by destroying power and communications lines, or scuttling a few ships in the Chicago River and shutting down its port, and letting the regime retain responsibility for the city and the chaos therein. Guerillas don't necessarily need to seize and hold cities to be successful, it's the government that needs to plausibly assert and retain control in order to win.

The other assumption is B) that mass atrocity by a government against its own people in the heart of its own population centers, rather than against, say, a foreign population or a specific ethnic minorities in the hinterlands, presents some unambiguous and unbeatable strategy for success. This assumes that the gains from such an approach will outweigh the substantial risks of further turning the civilian population against the regime, to say nothing of destroying much of the regime's own capacity, strength, and wealth, effectively "cutting off his nose to spite his face." I've never heard or seen any regime, aside maybe from the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (hardly efficient and sophisticated despots them), go that far in trying to destroy their own population and productive base. (The Soviets didn't target more than maybe a few percent of their own population, and the Nazis killed foreigners.) I might see that latter outcome as a sort of "Hitler in his bunker" move, where the regime is about to lose and is prepared to destroy itself along with the rest of the country. "If we can't have it, no one will," but that's by definition merely another degree of defeat, rather than a means for the regime to win. And, for that matter, that level of ruthlessness depends on equally reliably ruthless military personnel. Again, turned against their own people, rather than foreigners or minorities, where would such people be found in sufficient numbers without creating the risk of an internal coup? One of Gaddafi's weaknesses in Libya was the fact that he didn't and couldn't keep a strong, powerful military to protect his regime (because he couldn't trust that another ambitious colonel like he used to be wouldn't eventually start another coup, Libya lost a war with Chad at one point).

If you are so brave, stop being blind and battle the real terrorists of 9/11: our own Zionists, both Jewish and Christian. Seriously, I do not want that. I am not an anarchist mass murderer, but be consistent. You can learn more by clicking my name and reading my messages, starting with the oldest.

Explain why the Bureau of Transportation Statistics never recorded the departure of flights AA 11 and AA 77 on 9/11/2001. Explain why the original BTS records said flights UA 93 and UA 175 were diverted. Download:

Our secret rulers rely on brains not brawn, and their greatest weapon is democratic dogma. Real democracy would be anarchy, and as long as alternatives are unthinkable, our only choices are do nothing or destroy civilization.

Lets take a serious look at these folks who seriously think their AR-15s are any match for the US Military. We have had some really ridiculous analogies made here by people who seem to be having trouble understanding the signifigant advantage the most expensive professional Army in history has over a well armed populace.

One thing people fail to realize is that supporting the second ammendment and the Military is a contradiction in a historical context. The founders who thought to include the part about bearing arms and forming militias never thought the public would allow a professional standing army to exist because of exactly what we are talking about. Armament at this stage is as much of a gaurd against 'tyranny' as only raising taxes on the top 2% is a fix for our debt, trivial at best.

Seal team 6 on it's own could probably kill or capture every single armed individual in Atlanta with minimal casualties in less than a month. You have an AR-15 they are the best trained killers on the planet backed by the most advanced technology the world has ever seen. Remember that they would be fighting on their home turf so making comparisons to our military's failures abroad is sophmoric.

If you truly believe your right to bear arms should be your last line of defense against a tyrannical government then to be regarded ss anything more than a parnoid half-wit you should oppose the existence of a standing professional army and a Defense budget even 1/20th of its current size. In my experience most of the hard-liner gun nuts I have met blindly support the troops while stockpiling assault rifles to protect against their 0.001% chance of being murdered in a home invasion. Isn't the existence of these people an indictment of the rational actor theory? I digress. Who was it that said "Gambling is a tax on the mathematically illiterate"? Whoever it was should have included non-sporting gun owners.

So if you believe in "Liberty" and believe that an armed citizenry is a safeguard against the state then it is only natural to limit the size and budget of the DOD. That is what you are arguing correct?

"Seal team 6 on it's own could probably kill or capture every single armed individual in Atlanta with minimal casualties in less than a month."

You're the one living in a fantasy world. Seal team 6 would take on an entire city and have them all rounded up in less than a month?

Atlanta has a population of about a half million and covers an area over 100 square miles. If just 2% of the population was armed that would be 10,000 people spread out over a 100 square mile area operating in their home environment. Seal team 6 (if it still existed) would have to capture one of those people about every 4 minutes if it were operating 24 hour/day for 30 days straight.

I decided to post this to everyone because of the perception/reality gap that seems to permeate this comment section and pretty much every other comment after a Gun related article.

There are two conclusions I came to. One is that considering the fact that we have allowed our country to build and maintain a professional army and sprawling defense department in peace time the "Guns are a check against your own governemnt" line of reasoning is effectively absurd. The effectiveness of the second ammendment as a means of protection against tyranny at home would require that only a volunteer army exists and is disbanded after conflict. The existence of such a vast and powerful Military/Defense Complex makes wannabe minutemen with rifles obsolete.

The second argument is about the logic that goes into making one of these purchases. Assault rifles and hand guns are not cheap by any means. If the primary reason someone chooses to buy one of these weapons is to defend themselves against other citizen's criminal intentions then we can view the cost of the weapon as a sort of insurance premium. You cannot carry an assault rifle outside of your house so the only time it could be used is in a self-defense situation at home. in this case most people think 'Home Invasion'. If you look at FBI data from 2010 link: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-...

Assuming home invasion murders happen as a result of Burglary you are looking at 80 total. I actually overstated this number initially that is 0.0000002% chance. If you haphazardly include Robbery murders as well that would move the odds up to 0.0000028%. So back to the insurance premium idea this would be equal to purchasing Meteor insurance for a one time payment of $1000 and that does not even take into account all of the terrible things that could accidentally happen with the weapon in your house.

Furthermore it seems reasonable to assume that the 'Home Invasions' that do occur are targeted toward homes with very valuable loot considering how much easier it would be to case the place and break in when nobody was there. And no your signed Dale Earnhardt mug does not qualify.

As to the first part of your comment: no.
As has been clearly argued in other comments here, effectiveness and success in defeating the hypothetical tyrant is not a necessary condition for establishing a foundation for the right to bear arms. Sorry.

wrong! you forget that all those boys in seal team 6 are americans who swore an oath to the constitution. if you think they are just killer robots who would excute americans you dont know many shooters. your arguement assumes that the entire military would go along with a plan that includes laying waste to the homeland, psh ya right.
and one more thing, most expensive military doesnt mean best trained. the us is way behind on tactics. we just have tons of gear but we are far from tactically proficient. the us weighs its troops down with a 100 pounds of crap and gear while eastern tactics run circles around us.

Nope, you forgot about the 0th Amendment, also known as "The Right to Have No Rights". Obviously this amendment does not exist in written form, but its existence can be easily traced back to the Founding Fathers and before. Basically, this amendment asserts that if you're a demographic or political minority, rights don't actually apply to you.

Japanese Americans during WWII had the right to bend over and take it or the right to be gunned down like dogs. If they had a problem with that, perhaps they should have had the foresight not to be born Japanese.

The SCOTUS has been steadily rolling back the 0th Amendment for the past 50 years or so, much to the chagrin of "literalists like Antonin Scalia. But don't worry, they'll bring it back.

The Constitution with its state's rights and slavery led to civil war. By 1860 the portion of non slave states increased sufficiently to make the abolition of slavery mathematically possible. So the South seceeded and poor Southerners were sent to slaughter while the slave owners stayed home and ran the plantations. Naturally, public attitudes towards the Constitution less than complimentary, but Congress was unwilling to replace the Constitution because that would be unconstitutional.

The following is Article V of The United States Constitution.

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

The United States is dead, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Perhaps if the Zionist occupation government attacks Iran, and Russia and China intervenes, and Israel unleashes its nuclear arsenal, real reform will be possible. Of course, 'democracy' and the Constitution will be replaced by a junta.

It would help convince me that The United States exists if I could just see proof that the man being tried in Denver is the real James Egan Holmes. This high school year book photograph shows the front teeth of the real Holmes, and it reveals a substantial portion of his left ear. I would also appreciate it if the judge allowed cameras in the court room. What is he trying to hide? Is there a video clearly showing Holmes's ears?

Colorado Shooting Suspect Went To San Diego High School
Friday, July 20, 2012
By KPBS and City News Service

I love the Economist precisely because it gives us in the U.S. a reasonable perspective outside of our American echo chamber. Since I became a subscriber at university, I have always appreciated the outsider's view. This is where that dynamic breaks down. I am a university graduate, a journalist, a small business owner, a champion of gay marriage, and an otherwise reasonable American. But I have often argued against the idea that our 2nd amendment to our Constitution involves the right to hunt. Blasting a bunny or felling a deer means little to me compared to our (if just theoretical) ability to resist our government.

I feel it is slightly uncouth to suggest that those of us who successfully put down George III may better understand the power of the extreme underdog... and yet.

When Britain claimed the world's largest economy, navy and foreign expeditionary force against a bunch of silly arms bearing colonialists, the world was forced to take notice.

Some very well educated, realists cling to the slightly romantic notion that we could do it again if necessary. If our cherished friends across the pond cannot fathom the idea... I guess we sort of like that. You can say bullocks, we say Happy Olympics!

It is exactly because of the biased articles like this I gave up on my subscription held for two decades since I was a college student who luckily escaped from a totalitarian country where citizens had no right to bear arms!

I probably should have better articulated in my original post the derivative effects of fighting for gun rights. Though it may seem like nothing more than tilting at windmills, the discussion tends to highlight the inevitable risks associated with republicanism and thereby work against them. Precisely because we can argue over gun rights as a theoretical deterrent to tyranny we are more likely to avoid allowing tyranny through the ballot box.

Commenting on A.Andros's brilliant, Swiftian extension of the Scalia arguments, I hope the Supreme court manages to keep its 'creationists' in an ever-shrinking minority that comes to terms with what has been going on in this country and in the world since the first Consitutional Convention over 200 years ago. Thank you, friend Andros.

If everyone carried a suitcase nuke or a nerve gas cannister with a deadman switch, wouldn't that pretty much end violent crime? And if the test is that you have to carry your armament, then both the personal nuke and nerve gas options seem constitutionally cleared by Justice Scalia.

I want to be reincarnated as Will Kane. I've admired Mr. Kane all my life. You may not know him but he looked just like Gary Cooper -- a really striking resemblance. What a man has to, a man has to do, and when it had to be done, Will was the man who did it when it needed doing, and then it was done and he didn't have to do it anymore. I think.

I remember Will striding purposefully down Main Street (I THINK it was Main Street -- there really weren't any street signs so maybe it was Elm Street, or Oak Street or Tree of Your Choice Street.) He had narrowed, flinty eyes, a stringy bow tie, and he wore a serape and smoked a thin cheroot . . .. wait a minute. On second thought, scratch the serape and thin cheroot -- I think that may have been The Man With No Name."

Anyway, somebody made a vow while in State Prison -- vowed it would be Will's life or His'n. Well, Will watched the clock and when it was nearly High Noon (in most places it is just "noon" but in his town it was High Noon -- maybe he was High Sheriff. Hell, I don't know!) he walked the walk, his .45 Colt strapped to his waist and confronted the Bad Guys and killed them all. Well, actually, that isn't true . . . Grace Kelley killed one but for some reason she married Cary Grant instead of Will after some business involving jewel robbery on the Rivera and . . . well, it's all very confusing.

Anyway, that is how I like to envision myself -- just like Will! Actually, I also envision myself coming ashore on Guadalcanal or suggesting to MLK jr. that a speech about a "dream" would be a sure winner! Insofar as daydreams are identical with reality, I am pretty sure I could defend my rights with Old Betsy (my wife), along with a rifle.

I wonder, though, how Will would have fared going up against professional soldiers equipped with the Squad Automatic Weapon (600 rpm cyclical rate of fire), the M4 assault rifle, or a grenade launcher. Would his trusty .45 Peacemaker keep a 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tank at bay? Or, would he have to aim a little lower -- say the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which packs a mere 25mm "chain gun," two machine-guns and seven TOW rockets? Would Grace have stayed with him if instead of shooting a varmint in the back with a handgun, as we saw her do, she had to go high-heels to combat boots with a remotely-piloted drone equipped with Hellfire Missiles?

You see, I wonder whether Joe Sixpack and his deer rifle or Sally Q. Public with her .22 Ruger handgun, both with about zero military training, are really up to the high standards set by Will when it comes to taking on those who would crush our American liberties. I wonder whether when it comes to real combat (I mean the type they show in the REALLY expensive arcade games like "Call of Duty") the typical private firearm wouldn't be about as useful as tits on a bull.

I dunno . . . it all sounds kind of "iffy" to me. Sort of unconvincing as a rationale for burying ourselves up to our kysters in handguns.

On the other hand, in my other fantasy the Rev. King says "That'a great idea! Write down a few phrases for me and I'll try them out on the crowd on the Washington mall next August . . . it might just catch on!"

I don't need my personal firearms to take on the oppressive federal government. However, I am amply well armed to thwart some low-life from doing a home invasion.

Gary Cooper was the town sheriff in that movie, so I would expect him to be armed and going after bad guys. Likewise, if bad guys came busting into Grace Kelley's house, I would applaud her for bustin' a cap in the intruder (front or back, doesn't matter to me).

I also think your parody of armed civilians standing up to an oppressive government seems farfetched only to a privileged white person who cannot possibly imagine a government that would abuse its authority over its own citizens, or thinks that any oppression would be from the government at a large-scale national level backed by tanks and airplanes. However, not all oppression comes on a grand, national stage, or is instituted as a formal government policy. In fact, most of the oppression that individuals have to deal with is done at the petty, local level. I would imagine that any black man living in the segregated south might have a totally different view of "benevolent" local government than you do.

and let us not forget that it was New Orleans police ("benevolent" government) that shot 6 unarmed people on Danziger Bridge during Katrina and then covered it up. Thankfully they were convicted. I agree.. we need not think the second amendment was meant solely for large scale international invasion or even federal tyranny, it starts much more local than that and we would be naive to believe that government is inherently "benevolent" at all times and places

Does the author not see what is going on in Syria? Or what occurred in Libya? These were tyrants who had access to modern armed forces, and even though clearly inferior to the US armed forces, still presented the same challenges to insurgents such as tanks, aircraft, and artillery do. If there were an insurrection within the US to overthrow the government, it would not be necessary for the populace to be able to go toe-to-toe with the US Marine Corps upon a field of battle - and in the kind of war likely to occur, a population armed with assault rifles and pistols and any manner of handheld weaponry would probably be able to win, whereas one not so armed would stand far less a chance of success.

Radical Islamists with “British accents” are among the coalition forces looking to topple Bashar Assad, says Jeroen Oerlemans, a photographer who was held hostage in Syria for a week. The UK Foreign Office has launched an investigation.

Oerlemans, a famous Dutch photo journalist, and John Cantlie, another photographer from the UK, were captured by a group of between 30 and 100 anti-Assad fighters when crossing the Syrian border from Turkey last week. They were then blindfolded.

"One of the black jihadists freaked out and shouted: 'These are journalists and now they will see we are preparing an international jihad in this place.'" Oerlemans told NRC Handelsblatt newspaper. He said that none of the fighters was Syrian.

"They all claimed they came from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh and Chechnya and they said there was some vague 'emir' at the head of the group."

About 40 per cent of the militants spoke English. In fact, several apparently talked with recognizable regional British accents, from Birmingham and London.

The two photographers suspected that a ransom would be demanded for their release and tried to escape. Oerlemans was shot twice in the leg during the failed attempt and Cantlie, who has so far not spoken to any media, was wounded in the arm.

The pair’s ordeal ended when the Free Syrian Army, the main anti-Assad force, demanded that their nominal allies hand them over.

"They took us with them like a bunch of gangsters," Oerlemans said, "Shooting in the air as we rode out of there.”

The Free Syrian Army released the men and the two are now resting in Turkey. They expect to travel home in the coming days.

If it is confirmed, Oerleman’s story will add to reports that Syria has become a magnet for radical Islamists, who are there either as mercenaries or because of ideology.

"As soon as Assad has fallen, these fighters want to introduce Islamic law, Sharia, in Syria," said Oerlemans.

Men armed with weapons similar to those owned by many American firearms enthusiasts are currently fighting a plucky little war against the tyrannical Syrian government. The same could not be done by Britain's shotgun owners, for instance, or Canada's duck & deer hunters. I think the author fails to understand fully the nature of gun ownership in the US. The tens-of-thousands of ARs (AKA "M16s") in private ownership in the US are not "handguns", they are full Assault Rifles.

Contrary to what some might think, the Syrian army is likely using some amount of restraint in their handling of their uprising. This is likely because they are a little middle eastern country living in a world with countries that would gladly make an example of them if they get too out of line. In short, they know they're being watched.

If outsiders werent watching and if syria knew they werent watching, I'm guessing the uprising would have been silenced quickly, at the cost of many many hundreds of thousands of dead.

Sadly, one only has to look at recent events in Africa (rwanda, somolia, etc) to see what a country or group of people can really do to another when they know no one is watching.

I believe your comparison is utterly inappropriate. The Syrian Army has nowhere near the amount firepower the US Army has. Let us consider the utterly unimaginable situation where a power-hungry US Army decides to take over the country. Can you explain to me what you would do with your ARs when it sends a battalion of M1A1 Abrams down your street?

I believe your comparison is utterly inappropriate. The Syrian Army has nowhere near the amount firepower the US Army has. Let us consider the utterly unimaginable situation where a power-hungry US Army decides to take over the country. Can you explain to me what you would do with your ARs when it sends a battalion of M1A1 Abrams down your street?

If even the Syrian army is exercising some degree of restraint against the rebels, as WorchestershireSauce said, then surely the hypothetical tyrannical USA would be similarly constrained by world opinion and the need to retain some claim to moral legitimacy. And the US volunteer military is generally politically conservative and pro-gun, so I would expect large-scale defections to the side of the rebellion (as happened in the Civil War). So a few NRA members alone probably wouldn't need to take on the full power of the US military.

All that said, the article (and Scalia) is basically correct: the theory that citizens must be allowed to own weapons in order to resist oppression by their own government implies that citizens be allowed to own military-grade weapons. Indeed, even if you believe the Second Amendment's militia reference refers merely to a right of collective self-defense (that is, individuals must be allowed to own guns because the citizen-militia is the last line of defense for the government and the people against a foreign invader), individuals still should be allowed to own military weapons since they are expected to become soldiers when needed.

This is a scary proposition and it is important to note that Justice Scalia is not to blame for it. The Constitution was written by men, not gods, and is over 220 years old. It is entirely reasonable to argue that the Second Amendment is outdated and dangerous and needs to be repealed. But unless and until Congress and state legislatures amend the Constitution, the Second Amendment says what it says, and it is not the job of the Supreme Court to save the Congress or the people from hard decisions by deciding that plain English words in our law no longer mean what their authors intended, or even what the dictionary says, but what we today want them to mean.

Domitian, i'd thank God that the army was dumb enough to roll armour into a built up area, gain some elevation and fetch my Molotov cocktails. But that isn't the point. As em7i7 (etc) notes, those ARs are enough to force the government to have to use armour at all, instead of just the police. It raises the stakes, forces the government to think twice about acting arbitrarily.

Too true, however, anyone familiar with automatic fire versus well-aimed semi-automatic fire knows full well that other than the horrendous racket, rapid expenditure of ammunition and temporary negative psychological effect, automatic fire is generally less effective in actually killing the enemy.

Automatic fire is lethal in the meeting of standard armies, which is rare these days. The point of automatic/burst fire among armies these days is suppressive fire to pin an enemy down to allow flanking maneuvers. Further proof of this is the fact that the M16 shoots a wimpy 22 caliber bullet. If lethality were the single motivating factor, everyone would carry 30-caliber rifles as opposed to just the riflemen.

A Molotov cocktail against a tank? Do you think we are living in the 1930s ? When you foolishly reveal your position by throwing the Molotov, you will be hit by one of the tank's shells.
In any case I do not buy the argument that it raises the stakes because a government which is determined enough to overturn the Constitution and assume power would also be prepared to suuppress all armed opposition ruthlessly.

Justice Scalia and his ilk are definitely to blame for it. If the Supreme Court can interpret the First Amendment in ways to include modern-day communication technologies, why can't it reinterpret the Second Amendment? In the Citizens United case, in the Obamacare case and in many other such cases the judges practically legislated from the bench.And in any case the Second Amendment is notoriously ambiguous. It is very easy to construe it in different ways. The Supreme Court itself reinterpreted it in the case District of Columbia vs Heller.
I think the position "It is not the job of the Court to protect the Congress or the people...." smacks of hypocrisy.

I'm not sure who it was who wrote it (Raymond E. Feist?) but in a completely different context he pointed out that a small group of armed men who are trained to use their weapons and who are not afraid to do so, will easily be able to take on a much larger number of people who are not trained in the use of such weapons or military tactics.

The guy was writing about mercenaries using swords against cliched peaceful innocent villagers, but the same concept could be applied to any situation throughout the ages, from ancient Greece or Rome, to Norman knights or the Mongol Hordes, right through to today with the most modern weapons: a civil militia with limited firepower, minimal training, no organisation or leadership, has got close to zero chance of standing up to any kind of serious military force applied against in a direct and purposeful manner.

Which is why the right to bear arms as some kind of civil militia against government tyranny, is little more than deluded wishful thinking.

Well, as ol' Joe Stalin once said about under-trained Russian conscripts fighting the Wehrmacht, "quantity has a quality all its own". The French were overwhelmed at Dien Bien Phu by human wave attacks, and the Chinese Army made a practice of storming U.N. positions in human waves during the Korean War. I would never automatically assume that a well-trained but smaller force will always outfight a significantly larger but inferior force. Heck, George Washington proved that even a pack of farmers can beat up on regular troops if given the right situation.

I doubt that the revolutionary wanabees are actually considering human wave attacks.

And, by the way, our colonial militia were notorious for breaking after one or two volleys. It took years for Washington, Lafayette, and Von Stuben to forge an army that would stand up to British regulars.

The US is more tribal than Iraq. It is far more likely that NH will spend as much time fighting VT as the GOVT. There is no cohesion to make any citizen revolt possible. There is no leadership among the citizenry, and no shared vision.

I don't think anyone is plotting armed revolution, nor are the defenders of the 2nd Amendment seriously contemplating that the U.S. Army will be rolling through their neighborhood shooting up the joint anytime soon. I am merely responding to ChuckE2's claim that an untrained group would stand no chance against a much smaller group of trained professionals -- I think it is pretty obvious that there are many historical examples of that equation not holding true. From a more modern perspective, there are many instances of mobs driving off smaller squads of trained police, despite the police being better trained, better, armed, and better organized. All of those are clear advantages for the police, but sheer numbers have their own unique advantage as well.

"I don't think anyone is plotting armed revolution, nor are the defenders of the 2nd Amendment seriously contemplating that the U.S. Army will be rolling through their neighborhood shooting up the joint anytime soon."

Really? You're new to this debate, aren't you? You can find refuting examples even in this thread. Go to some of the, ah, less restrained right-wing websites where the 2nd amendment is being debated... er, discussed... and get educated. Don't do it on a full stomach, however.

As to the pro-vs-numerous-amature question: Depends on more than a few other factors as well. (For just one example, are the pros there to stay, with dependable support and resupply? If so, you run out of willing amatures/martyrs fairly quickly. Mobs sometimes make cops retreat, but when the mob disipates the cops are still there.)

I'm not new to any of these debates, but I am fully informed enough and mature enough to recognize that the opinions of a few fringe kooks are not necessarily representative of the mainstream defenders of the 2nd Amendment. I don't equate the entire Democratic Party with the antics of PETA, or Greenpeace, or Occupy Wall Street, and no one else should equate defense of the 2nd Amendment solely with extremists.

Also, I recognize that most untrained, undisciplined mobs will be dispersed and overrun by trained professionals 9 times out of 10, but I also recognize that this is not an automatic inevitability.

Yes, and no one should equate all proponents of more effective gun laws with pachouli-scented earth mothers who think guns are icky things and that throwing them all in the ocean will end evil forever... or the communist vanguard seeking to disarm patriotic Americans in preparation for a UN takeover... or effete urban liberals who sneer at Bubba and the gun rack in his pickup. Not that such people don't exist - just as we should not fool ourselves that there aren't more than a just a few extremists polishing their weapons and dreaming of "taking their country back" in these polarized times. And that's the thing, Lex: Some of the kooks are more dangerous than others. Perhaps we should not fan the flames of their dark fantasies by abstract theorizing that, yes, given this and that unlikely condition, small arms and untrained guerrillas could, possibly, make a some difference.

Nah, they'd both be too busy getting wrecked by Massachusetts... well, NH would be, those guys actually believe we're unarmed and ripe for raiding. They could probably roll through some of the northern counties easily enough, at least the highly depopulated ones, but once they hit, say, Worcester, it would be lights-out for our libertarians neighbors to the north.